In late June, 2011, I said goodbye to hundreds of TV channels as I cancelled my DirecTV account. Teaming an old-fashioned VHF/UHF TV antenna mounted on the side of the house, a PC running Windows 7’s Windows Media Center, and an Xbox 360, we’re still able to watch almost all the shows we watched before in two rooms, but with monthly expenses well under $50/month. (Netflix, Hulu Plus, and a few TV series bought on Zune.)
In the living room, we have a media center PC, as well as an Xbox 360. The Media Center PC picks up about 20 HD channels. These channels look better than cable or DirecTV, because they’re not as heavily compressed. We get all the major networks and PBS, plus some subchannels that show classic TV shows, syndicated programs, and additional PBS shows, all recorded on the Media Center PC. We can also use this to watch any PC-compatible video services, such as Amazon, iTunes, and Hulu Plus shows that are “web-only.”
- Windows Media Center can act as a DVR and TV tuner, and also play back your music collection, photos, and more.
Though we could watch these services on the PC, we watch Hulu Plus and Netflix on the Xbox 360. The easy user interfaces and Kinect voice control are popular with the family. The Xbox 360 isn’t necessary here, but since we have it in the room anyway, might as well take advantage of it.
In the bedroom, a second Xbox 360 (the under-$200 4GB model is fine for this) lets us watch everything we can watch in the living room. It acts as a Media Center extender, so we can watch all of the HD shows we record on the PC, as well as live TV. We can also listen to the music stored on the PC. Plus, of course, we have Hulu Plus and Netflix on the Xbox 360 as well.
- The Xbox 360 not only plays great games, it can stream live and recorded TV.
You can use an older, retired PC for recording – it doesn’t take much oomph – but I specifically built a low-power-usage PC that could handle big-screen gaming, media center duties, and Blu-ray video playback, and also act as a backup location for music, documents, and photos copied by a batch file on a regular basis from my office PC.
Also, keep in mind that you could just as easily put the Media Center PC in an office or bedroom and just use an Xbox 360 extender in your main TV room.
With a Harmony Remote to simplify control of multiple devices, this setup is no more difficult to use than the DirecTV DVR/Xbox 360 combo we were using before. And the initial investment in hardware will be more than paid for in over $1K in savings by not paying a monthly satellite bill.
I love that idea, but skeptical I can make it work efficiently in my area (KC). Couple questions: Any advice on doing this setup with a Vista 64-bit PC (cable card, video card, antenna setup, etc.)? And, being a sports fan, I will definitely need my ESPN channels but Time Warner hasn’t allowed access to ESPN3 through my XBOX 360 as of yet. Any word on if/when this may occur?
Thanks.
Vista 64-bit will work great; I was using that pre-Win 7 with an earlier hardware build.
As long as you’re running a Media Center-compatible version (Home Premium or Ultimate), all you really need is a tuner and antenna. The HDHomeRun Dual http://t.co/KkcYRxX is great, and easy to set up, though an internal tuner’s cheaper. For antenna info and coverage for your area, best bet is to check the AVSForum over-the-air TV antenna topics. Lots of experts there who can use AntennaWeb.org to help you piece together what you need.
Alas, the whole ESPN3 thing is totally in the hands of the cable/DSL/Satellite providers.
I’m not a TV sports fan, but I wonder if web streaming services like MLB Extra Innings will help cover this gap for HTPC users?